Riders in the Chariot Read Online Free PDF

branch of Urquhart Smiths, not a lot was known about Mr Cleugh, but blank sheets are always whitest. Mrs Hare had _ heard that her Cousin Eustace was awfully nice _, neither young, nor yet middle-aged, comfortably off, and that his mother's brother had married the Honourable Lavinia Lethbridge, a daughter of Lord Trumpington.
    "What does Mr Cleugh do for a living?" Mary asked her mother.
    "I don't exactly know," replied the latter. "I expect he just lives."
    So, it all sounded most desirable.
    Eustace Cleugh, when he arrived, was not surprised at a lot of what he heard and saw, for as an Englishman and an Urquhart Smith, he had preconceived notions of what he must expect from colonial life in general and the Norbert Hares in particular.
    "Breeding is ninety per cent luck, whatever the experts and Urquhart Smiths may tell you, " Mr Hare announced the first night at dinner. "And when I say luck, I mean bad luck, of course."
    "There are so many rewarding _ topics!" his wife complained, looking at her cherry stones.
    Mary Hare stared at her cousin. An absence of interested upbringing had at least left her with a thorough training in observation, and although she looked deeper than was commonly considered decent, she often made discoveries. Now she confirmed that this man was, in fact, as her mother had forewarned, neither young, nor yet middle-aged. To Mary Hare it seemed probable that Mr Cleugh had always been about thirty-five. As she herself was of indeterminate age, she hoped they might become friends. But how was she to go about it? In the first place, he was of her father's sex. In the second, his beautifully kept, slightly droopy moustache, and the long bones of his folded-fan-like hands, appeared unaware of anything beyond the person of Eustace Cleugh. Perhaps if he had been a dog--say, an elegant Italian greyhound--she might have won him over by many infallible means.
    But as that was not the case, she could only offer him an almond.
    Which he accepted with an unfolding of hands. Now also he began to unfold his mind, and to offer to the audience in general--everything that Eustace spoke was offered to a general, rather than to a particular, audience--an account of a journey he had made with a friend through Central and Northern Italy.
    "After a short interlude at Ravenna," Mr Cleugh picked his way, "not in itself of interest, but there are the mosaics, and the zuppa di pesce _--and they are essential, aren't they?--we went on to Padua, where the Botanic Gardens are said to be the oldest in Europe. They are not, I must admit, particularly large, or fine _, as gardens go, but we found them to be of peculiarly subtle horticultural interest."
    Mrs Hare made the little social noises that one made. But her husband had begun to blink, repeatedly, and hard.
    "In Padua, poor Aubrey Puckeridge was struck down by some ailment we were never able to diagnose, part tummy, part fever, in what turned out to be--our guidebook had sadly misinformed us--a most primitive albeigo _."
    Mrs Hare made the same, only slightly more appreciative noises.
    "And did he die?" asked Norbert.
    "Well, no," replied Eustace Cleugh. "I hope I did not imply. I intended only to suggest that poor Aubrey was awfully indisposed."
    "Oh," said Mr Hare. "I thought perhaps the fellow died."
    Eustace Cleugh noticed that his cousin's husband had been drinking a good deal of his own poisonous wine.
    Mary Hare was fascinated by Mr Cleugh's story, not so much by the narrative as by how it issued out of his face. She put it together in piles of dead leaves, but neatly, and matched, like bank-notes. It made her sad, too. So many of the things she told died on coming to the surface, when their life, to say nothing of their after life in her mind, could be such a shining one. She wondered whether Mr Cleugh realized how dead his own words were, and if he was suffering for it. There were, after all, many things he and she had in common, if they could first overcome the